.... Bogdan said. “I have a commitment from Lockheed Martin, Pratt & Whitney, BAE and Northrop Grumman at the CEO level that they’re going to work together to drive down the cost of this airplane to make it comparable with a fourth-generation airplane.”

...When a Rand Corp. report concluded in December that the Joint Strike Fighter program would cost more than the total of three separate ones, Lockheed Martin responded sharply, accusing the authors of overstating the figures by a factor of two. But the company could not provide a source for its own numbers…...

The suitability of the controversial F-35 jet fighter as a replacement for the Royal Canadian Air Force's aging CF-18s is getting even murkier, if that's possible.

The fighter-replacement program has been thrown into limbo already over cost issues and development delays, with Ottawa considering whether to abandon the U.S.-sourced F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and reboot the search for another candidate.

Now comments by a senior U.S. Air Force general hint that Ottawa may have gotten it wrong from the very beginning.

First, a little background: The CF-18, in service with the RCAF since 1982, fulfills both an air superiority and ground-attack role for the Canadian Armed Forces, meaning it can dogfight with enemy jets and also work as an effective bomber.

Presumably its replacement should be able to do the same. Not so, says Gen. Michael Hostage, head of the U.S. Air Force's Air Combat Command.

In an interview published in the Air Force Times last month, Hostage said essentially the F-35 Lightning can't perform the air-superiority role. The air force is relying on its new F-22 Raptor to do that.

Hostage's comments were part of a conversation about preserving various important programs in the face of major cuts to the U.S. defence budget. He was asked about needed upgrades to the F-22, which is just coming into active service.

Hostage said he planned to fight hard to retain the upgrade program for the F-22.

"If I do not keep that F-22 fleet viable, the F-35 fleet frankly will be irrelevant," he told the Air Force Times. "The F-35 is not built as an air superiority platform. It needs the F-22."

The comment likely will explode like a bomb in Canadian defence circles.

“I’m sure you won’t see the general’s comments in any F-35 marketing literature,” Martin Shadwick, a York University professor and defence analyst, told the National Post.

“Canada needs a multi-role fighter and even if the F-22 were available we couldn’t afford another aircraft to fly top cover for the F-35s.”

Unlike the F-35, which is being developed for international sales, the Americans are keeping the F-22 to themselves. Both are stealth fighters developed by aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, but the F-22 is considered the most advanced fighter in the world.

Mike Barton told the Post the F-35 meets all Canadian requirements and Hostage's comments relate to the way the U.S. Air Force employs its fighters, which is not relevant to Canada.

Barton said he had not seen an adverse reaction to the Hostage interview from the federal government or any of the other countries considering the F-35.

Nonetheless, it's hard not to think the comments won't be investigated as Public Works Canada tries to decide whether to stick with the F-35 program or ditch it and start the search afresh for a CF-18 replacement.

The Globe and Mail reported in January that the government wants a decision soon because it wants to start phasing out the CF-18s starting in 2017.

Canada was on track to buy 65 F-35s until questions arose about the initial cost estimates.

A 2012 report by the Auditor-General criticized the process Ottawa used to pick the F-35 and said the government had underestimated the long-term cost of the program.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer later said the cost of the F-35 program would be about $29 billion, roughly double the $14.7-billion initial estimate.

OTTAWA - A new report in Washington is predicting more delays and possibly higher costs for the troubled F-35 jet fighter program.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, in a study released Monday, sounded the alarm about software development for the high-tech, radar-evading jet fighter.

The budget watchdog warned American law-makers that the separate computer programs that verify the aircraft's "basic operation" and "warfighting" capabilities, such as the firing of missiles and the dropping of bombs, could be delayed by 13 months.

A few dozen of the stealth fighters are already in service, but are mostly equipped with training and other rudimentary software that allows for testing.

The GAO says the current programs have "limited capability" and there's been "a need to fix problems and retest multiple software versions."

The manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, is supposed to come up with improved software that will allow the U.S. Air Force to begin using the F-35 in initial operations by July 2015, but the accountability office says that date is in question.

In Canada, the Harper government has yet to say whether it will stick with the F-35 program — or launch a full-blown competition to replace the country's aging fleet of CF-18s.

The plan to buy 65 of the ultra-modern jets was put on hold after an auditor general's report, almost two years ago, accused both National Defence and Public Works of failing to do their homework and low-balling the enormous lifetime cost.

Subsequent independent reviews have said it would cost Canadian taxpayers up to $44 billion over 40 years to buy, maintain and operate a modest fleet of F-35s — much more than the $16-billion price tag the Harper government initially floated.

The government has yet to buy any aircraft.

The program became the focus of opposition and public outrage, but has since dropped off the political radar, leading some in the defence industry to speculate the Conservatives want the issue to go away until after the next election.

The U.S. budget watchdog's report comes on the same day as Lockheed Martin was celebrating a decision by South Korea to buy the F-35 to replace its existing fighter jet fleet.

In order to keep the program on track, the Pentagon "will have to increase funds steeply over the next five years," said the accountability office.

"Annual funding of this magnitude clearly poses long-term affordability risks given the current fiscal environment," said the review.

"The program has been directed to reduce unit costs to meet established affordability targets before full-rate production begins in 2019, but meeting those targets will be challenging as significant cost reductions are needed."

The United States isn’t the only country trying to cut down defense spending while still being on the hook for the expensive boondoggle F-35 fighter jet. Italy, which at one point committed $12 billion to the aircraft, is once again looking at cutting its order down to just 45 planes, from an original 90.

The defense committee for Italy’s center-left Democratic Party published a report on weapons systems that included a section on the F-35. The reported stated that the F-35 offered "no significant industrial gains" and that its cost—while only estimated—"cannot co-exist with the needs of our public finances," according to Reuters.

The Italian government under Prime Minister Matteo Renzi announced a 10 billion euro (near $14 billion) income tax cut last week, and also said that the F-35 order would be revised as part of his government’s efforts to cut public spending. A source in the government told Defense News that the F-35 order could be cut in half from 90 stealth jets to 45. Two years prior, Italy cut its order of 131 F-35s down by 30 percent during the euro zone debt crisis.

The report highlighted reasons for cutting the F-35 order because the fighter program is characterized by too much variation in cost projections. Delays and cost overruns have raised the projected unit price from 75 million to 133 million USD. The most recent estimates from Lockheed Martin’s director of F-35 Korea Business Development, Randy Howard, said the planes will cost between $80-$85 million each.

The report also cites plans for a more integrated European defense system—strengthing defense's European identity. A fighter assembled in Italy, but made with closely-guarded America intellectual property doesn't look good compared to buying a Eurofighter—a version of which is being developed to take over the F-35's ground attack missions. Lawmaker Gian Piero Scanu, speaking on behalf of Renzi's Democratic Party told Bloomberg the F-35 program "fails to guarantee concessions for small- and medium-sized Italian businesses and can’t be counted on to create enough permanent jobs," and should be dropped in favor of the Eurofighter, which Italy already holds a 21 percent share in.

As for the wide range of possible costs per plane, Italy itself is at least partially responsible. Orders getting cut, by the Netherlands and now, it appears, Italy, are part of what complicates estimating how much the fighter will cost. With each Italian jet not ordered, the price of the remaining jets gets higher. With enough cancellations, the Economist warned that the F-35 could go into a death spiral, where rising costs cost cancellations which lead to higher costs, more cancellations and so on.

Italy’s PD paper said there is "a perceptible unease among the public when faced with major military spending during a period characterized by serious economic and financial difficulties," according to Reuters . It’s not only making the public uneasy, two-thirds of the Italian public doesn’t think the F-35 is necessary at all.

There still isn’t too much danger of an F-35 death spiral, though. The US Department of Defense is depending on the F-35 jack-of-all-trades (master of none) design to replace a fleet of ageing aircraft. Lockheed Martin is confident that whatever sales to NATO nations lack can be made up for in the South Pacific, by countries like Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan. Just today Reuters reported that South Korea was allotting $6.79 billion to buy 40 F-35s.

Even though the Pentagon made performance tests easier for the F-35, the fighter is $167 billion over budget, seven years behind schedule, and still plagued by problems that run the gamut from bad software to a bulkhead that breaks up during stress tests. It's hard to blame the Italians for wanting out, but as America's costliest weapon, the F-35 is firmly entrenched in the rarefied status of "too expensive not to buy." It's been a disaster so far, but with drone technology advancing, the Economist reassures that the F-35 is probably the last fighter the West will ever build.

OTTAWA - Two groups opposed to the possible purchase of the F-35 say the single-engine jet fighter would be too dangerous for the Canadian military to use over remote stretches of the country, particularly the Arctic.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Rideau Institute released a new report Monday that argues whatever jet replaces the country's CF-18s should have two engines.

The study, by defence expert Michael Byers, follows a report months ago that questioned the enormous cost of the Lockheed Martin stealth fighter.

Public Works Minister Diane Finley told the House of Commons on Monday there's been no decision on whether the government will stick with the controversial F-35 or proceed with a full competition.

A market analysis, which looked at alternatives and was compiled by a panel of independent experts, is still being assessed.

Defence insiders say the study does not make a specific recommendation for cabinet to consider, but rather lays out the capabilities of each aircraft and their availability.

Byers argued Monday that cabinet needs to consider the safety aspect of operating a single-engine fighter and he compares the F-35 to the CF-104 Starfighter, which also had a single engine.

The Starfighter was used by the air force for 26 years — from the 1960s to the 1980s — and was involved in crashes so often it was nicknamed "The Widow Maker" by pilots.

Byers said about a quarter of the jet’s 110 crashes were attributed to bird strikes, which resulted in engine failure. A total of 39 pilots died flying the CF-104s.

"We learned that lesson in 1980" when the Trudeau government chose the twin-engine CF-18, Byers said. "It seems now that the government may be forgetting that lesson. And I would not want the F-35 to be Canada's next widow maker."

A spokeswoman for Finley dismissed the analysis Monday night.

"Independent third party experts, with access to all of the real facts on this file, have worked to ensure that the reports prepared by DND are rigorous and impartial," said Alyson Queen.

The debate over whether a single — or duel — engine fighter was appropriate given the country's vast geography has raged in fits and starts since the Harper government elected to pursue the F-35 in the summer of 2010.

Government officials argued at the time there were no statistics that showed one type of aircraft was safer than the other, but Byers points to U.S. air force data that demonstrates single-engine jets have crashed more often.

The manufacturer and the government have argued that improvements in technology have made the F-35's engine more reliable and safer than its predecessors — a notion Byers dismisses by pointing to incidents involving commercial airliners.

"The single-engine versus twin-engine issue has not been resolved by improvements in the reliability of jet engines," the report said.

"Engine failures will still occur, and when they do so away from an airport, a second engine is the only thing that can prevent a crash."

The federal government is being urged to reconsider its expected decision to buy a fleet of F-35 fighters. This time the argument isn’t about cost or procurement problems, it's about what's inside the plane.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a report by Michael Byers this morning in Ottawa.

F-35 purchase decision expected next week in report
F-35's French rival pitches 'Canadianized' fighter jet
Entitled "One Dead Pilot," the report argues that fighter aircraft with a single engine — as the F-35 has — are too dangerous and unreliable to be used by the Canadian military.

"This issue is especially important for Canada, which has the longest coastline in the world and vast Arctic territories," writes Byers.

Bird strikes

In the report, Byers compares the F-35 to the single-engine CF-104 Starfighter, which the Canadian air force used from the 1960s to 1987 and which was involved in 110 crashes in that time.

A quarter of those crashes were attributed to bird strikes and the fact there was no secondary engine to allow the plane to keep flying.

Byers is the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law and the University of British Columbia and also a former NDP candidate.

"Engine failures will still occur, and when they do so away from an airport, a second engine is the only thing that can prevent a crash," Byers concludes.

Serious mistake

"The need for a twin-engine fighter jet is very clear, and purchasing a single-engine fighter jet would be a serious mistake," he said.

The government is expected to make a final decision on the replacement for the CF-18 as early as this week.

Although Byers says the F-35 is not the plane for Canada, he has no issues with other countries opting for the strike-fighter.

As an example, he notes the U.S. has a much higher density of airports on its territory — providing greater options for emergency landing in the event of engine failure.

Hedging bets

Byers also says the U.S. has "hedged its bets," by having in its air force fleet the twin-engine F-22.

"The United States bases many of its F-22s in Alaska," he adds. "The F-35s will not be based in Alaska because a single-engine plane is inappropriate for the Arctic — the United States Air Force has decided that."

Byers says the Royal Canadian Air Force has studied the F-35 carefully, and may very well have examined the issue of single-engine versus twin — but the RCAF isn’t making its report public.

OTTAWA - National Defence laid out its timeline Monday for replacing Canada's aging fleet of jet fighters, saying a contract won't be finalized until at least 2018.

But the Harper government was quick to say details in its long-anticipated defence acquisition guide should not be treated as gospel.

The document, which is meant to provide industry a snapshot of the military's expected equipment needs over the next two decades, contains some 200 different pieces of kit, a schedule of when the government is expected to buy and roughly how much the programs are worth.

The guide says the replacement program for the CF-18s will remain in the definition phase between 2015 and 2017, meaning a decision could be pushed out past the next federal election, slated to take place in less than 18 months.

More importantly, it says there will be a request for proposals between 2017 and 2019.

It goes on to say the awarding of the contract is expected between 2018 and 2020, which is around the time when many of the CF-18s are expected to reach the end of their service life.

The guide also proposes upgrades to the CF-18 electronic warfare suites, as well as software and training improvements for the fighters, originally purchased in the 1980s.

What that means for the fate of the controversial F-35 program is unclear.

The federal cabinet is examining a series of reports, including an independent panel's market analysis of which fighter aircraft could meet the future needs of the air force.

It could decide over the next few weeks to continue with the stealth fighter plan or throw the replacement program open to a full-blown competition.

Another option might be for cabinet to ask the air force to rewrite its statement of requirements.

The federal Liberals are taking the guide as a sign that there will be a competition. Defence critic Joyce Murray called on the Conservatives to guarantee that the Prime Minister's Office will allow open bidding, and not overrule the plan.

"Great news today from the Department of National Defence," Murray told the House of Commons during question period.

But Public Works Minister Diane Finley, whose department is overseeing the troubled program, warned against reading too much into the timeline, saying no decision has been made and likely won't be any time soon.

"We've had an independent panel of outside experts review the assessment that was done by the RCAF," Finley said.

"Over the next several weeks we are going to be carefully reviewing a number of reports on this subject, so that we can make sure that we get the proper equipment our men and women in uniform need to do their job."

Johanna Quinney, a spokeswoman for Defence Minister Rob Nicholson, was even more specific, saying the government reserves the right to change its mind.

"The majority of the projects in this publication do not have formal authority from the government and remain subject to change in terms of scope, cost and schedule including termination without any further explanation or liability," Quinney said in an email.

It's not the first time the 2018 date has been floated in relation to the fighter replacement.

Earlier this year, the manufacturer of the F-35 indicated that the Harper government had pushed its potential delivery date for the first aircraft off until that year, holding its place in the line of countries that have already agreed to buy the jet.

But Steve O'Bryan, vice-president of business development at Lockheed Martin, said in order to meet the timeline, Canada would have to make a decision and begin making payments next year.

The federal government has not signed a delivery contract, but the partnership arrangement among nations requires them to put begin putting money down three years before the first plane arrives.

The guide also says the government's plan to buy surveillance and combat drones, originally conceived in 2007, will be put off until 2020.

The military plans to extend the life of its C-150 Polaris transports and tankers out beyond 2026 and will modernize its troubled submarine fleet so it can remain active well into the 2030s.

Latest incident in hugely expensive weapons program threatens plane's participation in two UK air shows this month
The US military said it had grounded its entire fleet of 97 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets pending further inspection of the warplane's single Pratt & Whitney engine.

The Pentagon's F-35 program office, air force and navy issued directives on Thursday ordering the suspension of all F-35 flights after a fire on an air force F-35A jet at Eglin air force base in Florida on 23 June, according to statements by the Pentagon and the F-35 program office.

The Pentagon said US and industry officials had not pinpointed the cause of the fire, which occurred as a pilot was preparing for takeoff. The pilot was not injured.

The Pentagon said preparations were continuing for F-35 jets to take part in two UK air shows this month – the Royal International Air Tattoo and the Farnborough International Air Show – but a final decision would be made early next week. The fire has already derailed plans for an F-35 fly-past at the naming ceremony for Britain's new aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, on Friday.

The 23 June incident was the latest to hit the Pentagon's costliest weapons program, the $398.6bn F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. An in-flight oil leak triggered mandatory fleetwide inspections of the jets last month.

"Additional inspections of F-35 engines have been ordered, and return to flight will be determined based on inspection results and analysis of engineering data," the US Defence Department said in a brief statement issued late on Thursday.

Pratt & Whitney said it was working closely with air force officials who are investigating the fire to determine the cause of the incident and inspect all engines in the fleet. A spokesman, Jay DeFrank, said it would be inappropriate to comment further since the incident was the subject of an investigation.

The Pentagon's F-35 program office said determining the cause of the fire and potential mitigating actions were its highest priority. It said impacts to flight test, training and operations of the radar-evading warplane were being assessed.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that US and British authorities were preparing directives ordering a mandatory engine inspection estimated to take about 90 minutes.

British officials remained part of the discussions with US officials and agreed with the US recommendation to ground the jets, pending further inspection results, the F-35 program office said.

F-35 engine fix coming
By Claudette Roulo, DoD News, Defense Media Activity / Published October 31, 2014
WASHINGTON (AFNS) -- Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher C. Bogdan, the head of the F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter program office, said by the end of December he expects to have decided on a permanent solution for a design issue that caused an F-35A engine to fail in June at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.

The engine's manufacturer, Pratt & Whitney, has offered several potential fixes, some of which already are being tested, Bogdan told reporters Oct. 30.

The engine failure and subsequent fire were the result of micro fractures in one of the three-stage fan sections that compress air before it enters the engine, the general said. These sections are lined with a polyimide material that is designed to rub against the fan blades to reduce pressure loss.

In the case of AF-27, the third fan rubbed in excess of tolerance during maneuvers several weeks before the failure, causing the blades to heat to about 1,900 degrees -- 900 more than ever expected, Bogdan said. This led to micro fractures in the titanium part of the rotor, which grew over the next few weeks of flying before finally failing.

"That caused that rotor to liberate from the airplane," Bogdan said. "The fire was caused not by the engine, but by the pieces of the engine that flew out through the aft upper fuselage fuel tank."

The fire led officials to ground the aircraft July 3 for fleet wide engine inspections. The aircraft returned to limited flight July 14 when no systemic issues were found, defense officials said.

"Two short mid-term fixes have already been validated," Bogdan said.

For the first, a new engine is flown in a defined profile that subjects it to a specific set of altitudes, airspeeds, G-forces and roll rates, he said.

"In two sorties, you can burn in the engine in a very controlled way," the general said, "such that where this rubbing occurs has now been burned in, so to speak, and anything else you do with the airplane inside the envelope won't cause any more rubbing than what it has already seen."

This burn-in process already has been conducted on four of the Air Force's test aircraft, he said. The procedure takes about an hour for each sortie, and the engine is inspected after each flight. If the engine passes the second inspection, the airplane is cleared for flight within its "normal full envelope," Bogdan said.

"We've done that on four test airplanes already, validated it. It's working (and) we plan on using that on the test airplanes over the next few weeks," he said.

The second method involves a change to the manufacturing process of the engine, the general said. Instead of designing the blades to rub on the polyimide lining of the stator walls, the lining would be "pre-trenched," Bogdan said.

"When we put the fan blade in there, no matter what we do on the airplane G-wise, speed-wise, altitude-wise, it won't rub anymore," the general said.

The new design already has been flight-tested on AF-2 and AF-4, which are developmental testing jets.

"As it turns out, that solution works very, very well," Bogdan said. "We inspected the engine and we saw no signs whatsoever of any rubbing at all, not even normal rubbing that we see, which leads us to believe that we can fly through the full envelope of the airplane and not have any of that heating anymore."

All 19 developmental testing aircraft will have undergone either the burn-in or pre-trenching retrofitting by the end of December, the general said, noting that the team is working with Navy and Air Force airworthiness authorities to approve the process for the more than 100 already-fielded F-35s. Pratt & Whitney is bearing the cost of retrofitting or burning in all of the fielded engines, Bogdan said.

It will take months to complete the fixes for all of the fielded airplanes, he said. Two methods were needed because fabricating a set of new stators takes a week.

"So if we just went with that method alone," he said, "it would take us quite a while to replace all the engine fan sections of the fielded airplanes ... With the rub-in procedure, we can start getting to the same result by flying those airplanes through the burn-in. That's why it's important to get both those solutions out there."

Pratt & Whitney has presented several options for a long-term solution to the issue, Bogdan said:

-- Change the polyimide material to one that can handle more heat

-- Treat the tips of the titanium fan blades to withstand more heat

-- Pre-trenching

-- Some combination or combinations of the above

"We are going to take our time, and it probably won't be before the end of (December) where the enterprise -- and when I say enterprise, I mean the Navy, the Air Force (and) my engineering team -- get together and decide what is the best option for production cut-in," he said.

Whatever cut-in costs are generated by re-engineering and producing the new solution for the production engines will be paid by Pratt & Whitney, Bogdan said. "We, the government, are going to pay the nonrecurring engineering portion of that, because that's the way the ... contract was built 14 years ago, and we won't go back and change that."

Bogdan said he estimates it won't be until near the end of 2015 before engines are coming off the production line with the chosen solution. Once that happens, any engines that are not in airplanes yet will be retrofitted.

A Lockheed Martin F-35A Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) was outperformed in the type’s first basic fighter maneuvering exercise by a 20-plus-year-old F-16 fighter, according to a leaked Lockheed Martin report prepared by the pilot who flew the mission.

Inferior energy maneuverability (EM), a limited pitch rate and flying qualities that were “not intuitive or favorable” in a major part of the air-combat regime gave the F-16 the tactical advantage and allowed its pilot to get into both missile-launch and gun parameters over the F-35. Another drawback was that the large helmet and F-35 canopy design restricted the pilot’s rearward view.

Lockheed Martin and the JSF Program Office confirm that the document, originally leaked by the War is Boring website, is genuine but says “the interpretation of the scenario results could be misleading.” Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, director of the U.S. Air Force F-35 integration office, says that it is “too soon” to judge the F-35’s maneuverability.

JSF risk reduction and development have been under way since late 1996 and more than $80 billion has been spent.

F-35 in high-angle-of-attack testing. The fighter has a combat advantage in that area, but it takes too long to get in and out of it, a pilot reports. Credit: Lockheed Martin/Tom Reynolds

The test mission in the report was carried out on Jan. 14. It could have been one of those flown from Edwards AFB in California by Lockheed Martin site lead test pilot David “Doc” Nelson and reported by AW&ST in April. At that time, however, the question of which aircraft had the advantage in the engagement was not discussed. The author’s name has been removed from the copy of the report obtained by Aviation Week.

The key performance parameters set for the JSF do not call for the aircraft to be superior to the F-16 and F/A-18C/D in air-to-air combat, but they demand comparable performance in terms of sustained and instantaneous g and acceleration. However, Lockheed Martin executives and pilots have stated that when including sensor fusion, stealth and other attributes, the F-35 will be superior in air combat, by margins of 400-600%, to so-called “fourth-generation” fighters (a term coined by Lockheed Martin to denote both older U.S. fighters and current non-U.S designs).

The F-16 that outmaneuvered the F-35 in the January test was an F-16D Block 40, one of the lower-performing versions of the family, delivered between 1987 and 1994. The Block 40 was beefed up to carry more weapons than the preceding Block 30 and incorporated Have Glass radar-cross-section reduction measures, boosting its empty weight, but lacked the higher-performance engines introduced on the Block 50. The F-16 retained its two 370-gal. external fuel tanks during the engagement and was limited to 7g until they were empty.

Lockheed Martin notes that AF-2 is an early development aircraft without stealth coatings, although those are not relevant in within-visual-range (WVR) combat and their absence would make the airplane lighter. It was also not equipped with simulated air training missiles, but neither was the F-16. Lockheed Martin says AF-2 lacked “software that allows the F-35 pilot to turn, aim a weapon with the helmet, and fire at an enemy without having to point the airplane at its target,” but this capability is available in clear daylight on any modern fighter, and was not used by the F-16 in the test. Also, the F-35 cannot exploit this capability in stealth configuration because there is no suitable high-off-boresight air-to-air missile planned for internal carriage on the aircraft.

The report identifies changes to F-35 flight control software that could mitigate some of the problems found in the test. However, none of them can correct the deficit in energy maneuverability, which is defined at any given airspeed by the aircraft’s available thrust, drag and weight and indicates its ability to accelerate, climb or change maneuver state.

The F-35 has higher angle-of-attack (AoA) limits than the F-16, which should normally be an advantage, but a combination of factors, including a limited pitch rate and the inferior EM, made it less useful. It took too long to reach high AoA, and the lack of energy maneuverability meant the F-35 could not quickly re-accelerate into high-speed maneuver states.

The sortie included 17 engagements starting between 18,000 and 22,000 ft. with a 10,000-ft. floor, with starting speeds between 380 and 440 kt. indicated airspeed, the report says. The test was primarily designed to “stress the high AoA control laws during operationally responsive maneuvers utilizing elevated AoAs and aggressive stick/pedal inputs,” the report says. The pilot judged the test as being “extremely effective at providing data that are not achievable with scripted test cards,” it adds.

The first observation in the report is that “the most noticeable characteristic of the F-35A in a visual engagement was its lack of energy maneuverability,” and the pilot notes that the F-35A has a smaller wing than the F-15E, similar weight and 15,000 lb. less thrust.

The “insufficient pitch rate exacerbated the lack of EM” the pilot reported, because energy would bleed off continuously as the pilot tried to get the nose up. The F-35 would have had more shot opportunities in some cases if the pitch rate limit (imposed by control laws rather than aerodynamics) had been more relaxed, the report says. Offensive and defensive gun moves were slow and easily detected and countered, the report says, and the highest g loading was around 6.5g in breaks or on entering a turn, decreasing as the aircraft slowed down. The F-35 airframe is designed for 9g.

High AoA flight allowed “a few offensive opportunities” against the F-16 (which is AoA-limited and roll- and yaw-limited towards its maximum angle of attack). For instance, a long full-rudder input could yaw the F-35 sharply enough to cause the F-16 to cross its nose and get a missile shot, the report says. But this maneuver “required a commitment to lose energy” with the F-35 headed for the floor, and “meant losing the fight unless the bandit made an error.”

The F-35 has a sophisticated flight control system (FCS) that changes the response of the control surfaces to stick and rudder commands as the airplane moves through its flight envelope, with low- and high-AoA regions and a “blended” region between them, at 20-26 deg. This was the area where the aircraft “fought best,” the pilot reported. But it was not easy, because flying qualities “were neither intuitive nor favorable” and “the lateral/directional response was often unpredictable.”

The problem, in the pilot’s view, is the way that the FCS adjusts response according to AoA. In flight test, the pilot aims at a specific AoA and expects a certain response, but in a dynamic flight “attention is focused on the bandit rather than the specific AoA [and] the response was often confusing,” the report says. The pilot was left waiting for a roll rate that did not happen, or expected yaw and got sideslip.

In one case the pilot applied full rudder to no immediate effect, then tried a stick input – just as the rudder kicked in. The pilot added more rudder and got a “fantastic yaw rate” that was promptly quashed (“immediate, abrupt and forceful”) by the anti-spin logic in the FCS.

Both the anti-spin logic and the slow pitch rate meant that the F-35 could not escape a gun attack by the F-16. “No successful guns defense was found,” the report says. For instance, a standard escape maneuver – unload, roll and pull to change the plane of the aircraft’s movement – was bogged down by pitch rate, so “the result was an out-of-plane maneuver that was easy to track.”

The size of the helmet-mounted display system presented a problem. “There were several occasions where the bandit would have been visible, but the helmet prevented getting in a position to see him,” the report says. The “eyebrow” formed by the visor assembly also blocked the tally at times.

Some mitigating measures are advocated in the report, such as relaxing restrictions on AoA onset and pitch rate. Both would let the pilot move more quickly into and out of the higher-AoA regime, where the F-35 has a controllability advantage over the F-16. The pilot also advises expanding the “blended” control regime, avoiding shifts in control laws in a key part of the combat envelope and giving the pilot more yaw authority versus the anti-spin logic.

In the pilot’s view, the F-35’s departure resistance is good enough to allow more latitude. Other aircraft, including the F/A-18 Super Hornet, have benefited from flight control software changes over time, which have allowed pilots to better exploit the aircraft’s strong points and mitigated early problems.

However, the basic energy maneuverability deficiency is more difficult to address, and most contemporary fighters are much less restricted at high AoA than the F-16. (“Drag him into the phone booth” has long been the adversary’s best way to fight the F-16.) “The F-35 goes out against something like a Sukhoi or a Typhoon and they’re going to eat his lunch,” remarks an experienced military pilot. “They have the advantage in turn rate, [specific excess power] and energy bleed rate.”

Pilots who talked to Aviation Week about the leaked report – some but not all of whom work or have worked for other fighter manufacturers – were surprised by the magnitude of the shortfall in energy maneuverability but not by its existence. The limitations of the Block 40 F-16 and the fact that it retained its tanks “should have been a plus for the F-35,” says one, and the engagement altitude – “above mid-range” in terms of within visual range combat – should have favored the F-35 because of its modern, powerful engine.

“People all need to look at what F-35 really is,” another aviator comments. “A stealth A-7 bomb truck, capable of first-night suppression of enemy air defenses, with limited self-escort. It is, as software-configured right now, not a light air-combat-maneuvering-capable platform. This is what we saw with the early F/A-18E/F blocks: millions of lines of code, and in need of constant update. But, in this case, it’s becoming increasingly easier to rewrite the code laws to allow for those changes.”

“Anyone can see that it is not a very agile aircraft,” a third pilot comments, pointing out that changing flight test laws may be more of a problem if – as some operators expect – pilot flying hours are reduced and training is transferred to lower-cost aircraft and simulators.

Part of Lockheed Martin’s response to the release of the report is to downplay the importance of maneuvering combat. “The F-35’s technology is designed to engage, shoot, and kill its enemy from long distances, not necessarily in visual ‘dogfighting’ situations,” the company says. But as one of Aviation Week’s sources says, reliance on deciding the fight beyond visual range may not always be possible in the early stages of a conflict (power projection, show-of-force) or where rules of engagement limit BVR shots. “My belief is that the tactics against the F-35 will be something which we are not used to saying: If you see one — get close.”

Last week's leak of a report by a test pilot on the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) team would have raised much less of a ruckus had it not been for earlier statements from program people. Here's one from 2008, responding to another leak, this time of backup slides in a RAND study that compared the F-35 to the Sukhoi Su-35 and other potential adversary aircraft:

Citing U.S. Air Force analyses, (Maj. Gen. Charles Davis, then JSF program director) said that the F-35 is at least 400% more effective in air-to-air combat capability than the best fighters available in the international market, including Sukhois.

More recently:

Lockheed Martin is claiming that all three versions of the F-35 will have kinematic performance better than or equal to any combat-configured fourth-generation fighter. The comparison includes transonic acceleration performance versus an air-to-air configured Eurofighter Typhoon and high angle-of-attack flight performance vis-a-vis the Boeing Super Hornet. "The F-35 is comparable or better in every one of those metrics, sometimes by a significant margin, in air-to-air," says Billy Flynn, a Lockheed Martin test pilot.

It is therefore understandable that people thought it was news when a report showed the F-35 as inferior in energy maneuverability to a Block 40 F-16 - which nobody would claim matches the Typhoon's speed, the Super Hornet's high-AoA performance or the Su-35's combination of the two. Some of the responses from Team F-35 were worth reporting too.

First on the scene was Dan Goure of the Lockheed Martin-sponsored Lexington Institute. "You Say the F-35 Can't Dogfight? I Say Good", the piece was headed. Although Goure seems to equate all air combat maneuvering with dogfighting, and all dogfighting with gun kills (which was entirely true until 1956) he cites John Stillion's recent report for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments as evidence that sensors, networks and weapons have made maneuvering irrelevant. "The important conclusion is not that the F-35 is a bad aircraft," Goure says, "but that the existing fleets of fourth-generation aircraft are increasingly obsolete."

In the U.K., the Royal Air Force requirement calls for the F-35B to be capable of full-spectrum air combat missions as part of an aircraft carrier group - and the F-35B has an empty weight 3,200 lb. heavier than the F-35A, which is not good from the maneuverability viewpoint. Lockheed Martin executive and former RAF Tornado pilot Andrew Linstead talked to the Daily Telegraph, praising the F-35's situational awareness and saying that air combat had changed. "People are using metrics they know, understand and may have an emotional attachment to, but they have to think about it differently. The battlefield picture they have now means they can avoid their adversary or choose to fight in a way that will give them a better outcome."

Goure, Linstead and Flynn seem to be on opposite sides of the same debate, one that started about 30 years ago as fighter traditionalists and stealth purists fought tooth and nail over the requirements for the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF). One group argued that stealth air combat was like submarine warfare - "the last thing you want to do is surface and use the deck gun" - while the others, with the Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile still in development, maintained that there would always be leakers who survived the first beyond-visual-range (BVR) missile exchange and closed within visual range (WVR) where radar stealth would be irrelevant.

The traditionalists won. The F-22 Raptor was designed to be highly agile with a large usable flight envelope (hence its monster tail surfaces) and it had a complex, space-consuming arrangement that allowed AIM-9 missiles to be fired in lock-on-before-launch mode almost anywhere in the forward hemisphere.

The JSF is not as agile, but program leaders say that it will prevail in BVR because of stealth and situational awareness, and in WVR it will use its 360-deg. target-tracking device- the Distributed Aperture System (DAS) - to cue high-off-boresight air-to-air missiles (AAM) on to its adversaries.

What they don't say as loudly is that it can't do both, at least on the same mission. Unlike the F-22 (and the Chengdu J-20 and Sukhoi T-50) it doesn't have side bays and trapezes for rail-launched AAMs. If the F-35 carries AIM-9s it does so externally, and by Lockheed Martin's own definition it is not stealthy.

This is not an accident, or even a matter of program execution. The F-35 was "70% air-to-ground and 30% air-to-air" at its inception - a direct quote from George Muellner, who was in charge of what was then the Joint Advanced Strike Technology (JAST) program in 1995. The U.S. Air Force, as the biggest customer, called the shots on the requirement. The F-117 Nighthawk had been the hero of the first Gulf Warbut had three main limitations: it couldn't find targets in-weather, couldn't hit moving targets and had neither the situational awareness nor the armament to survive in daylight. JAST was designed to do all these things as well as having external weapon stations to act as an F-16 on "Day Two" when the defenses had been degraded.

The Air Force in 1995 expected to have 442 F-22s to deal with any fighter threat, and side AAM bays would not remotely fit into the size and weight constraints imposed by the short take-off, vertical landing requirement. Stovl also limited the weight and size of the wing and the length of the body.

But what if the ATF traditionalists were wrong - as Goure and Linstead seem to imply - and WVR combat can and should be avoided? There are two ironies in Goure's citation of Stillion's work. The first is that Stillion was a co-author of the RAND report that drew down Davis' ire in 2008. The second is that Stillion's new study for CSBA suggests that the way to win a future air battle is not to use F-35s or F-22s but to launch AAMs from highly stealthy unmanned air vehicles, controlled from an aircraft that looks like the Long Range Strike Bomber. The logic is powerful: high-performance fighters are almost by definition short-legged, and even if they are not vulnerable, their tankers are. (I'm not the only one to have concluded that the J-20 is aimed directly at tankers and other support assets.)

That view of air combat is bolstered by Stillion's extensive study of air combat history, which shows a steady migration from guns to short-range AAMs to BVR AAMs. But there is an inkling of doubt here. Others have seen different trends - notably, the developers and customers in the MBDA Meteor program predict that BVR battles will involve more maneuvering, at high speeds. History is instructive, but not determinative.

Notably, air-to-air conflicts in the past 30 years have been grossly unbalanced. The U.S. and its allies have had a major advantage in equipment - the West has never faced the Sukhoi family, and the most modern Russian fighter to have been encountered is the early-model MiG-29, which has pitiful range and is locked into the Soviet ground-controlled-intercept doctrine. Training and experience have been on the Western side by a huge margin. And generally, one side has had the support of airborne warning and control, signals intelligence and communications jamming assets and the other has had none of these.

Not surprisingly, then, many engagements have been decided BVR; and adversaries have been given cause to believe that any attempt to get into a WVR engagement is likely to be fatal. But that kind of imbalance is not an eternal reality. Dan Goure's reaction to the F-35's possible lack of agility may be "I say, good," but he's not flying it in combat, is he?